Death Mage (Prof Croft Book 4) Read online

  Death Mage

  Prof Croft Book 4

  Brad Magnarella

  © 2017

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved.

  Cover by Damonza.com

  Table of Contents

  The Prof Croft Series

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  Author’s Note

  Books by Brad Magnarella

  The Prof Croft Series

  BOOK OF SOULS

  DEMON MOON

  BLOOD DEAL

  PURGE CITY

  DEATH MAGE

  *MORE TO COME*

  Be sure to sign up to the Prof Croft mailing list to be the very first to learn about new releases:

  http://bit.ly/profcrofters

  1

  I staggered, my breaths coming in ragged gasps. The trees on all sides looked the same, their trunks mottled with black mushrooms. I had been in this dank forest before. I couldn’t remember when, but it was familiar enough that I knew no matter where I ran, I would only end up more lost.

  A chill wracked my five-year-old body as I stopped and tilted my head back. The gray sky through the branches was dimming with the coming night. When darkness fell, the creatures would emerge.

  Horrid creatures.

  I broke into another blind sprint. “Mom!” I shouted.

  I had no memory of my mother. I knew her only as a framed photograph in the living room of Grandpa and Nana’s house: a young woman looking out a large window, half her face in light, the other in shadow, one hand resting over the pregnant swell of her stomach. Even so, I sensed in my gut that she was the only one who could help me out of this place.

  “Mom!” I called again.

  Someone, or something, answered, a whisper that slithered from the trees to my right: “Everson.”

  The alien voice was familiar to me in the same way the forest was. The voice would chase me and eventually catch me. I veered away from it, heart slamming. The voice echoed from all sides now.

  “Everson … verson … son.”

  I pumped my arms and legs as hard as I could. Around me the forest darkened. The mushrooms on the trees clotted into thick, dripping tumors. When I tried to shout for help, the spores that swept through the air closed my throat. Only a gasping whine squeezed out.

  “Everson,” the voice whispered again, seeming to reach for me. “Join us.”

  I arched my back, breaking through fresh whirlwinds of spores and into a deepening gloom. The air stunk of rot. Wet leaves squished underfoot. Sinister shadows moved among the trees.

  “Everson … verson … son.”

  “Stay away,” I gasped, batting through the crowding branches.

  The forest pressed in until I had to slow down to pick my way through. I climbed between a pair of trees, the toadstools on their trunks bursting like pustules, and became stuck. I grunted and squirmed, but the space between the trees narrowed further, holding me fast.

  No! I thought desperately.

  But this was what always happened, wasn’t it?

  “Join us,” the voice whispered behind me. “Join the cluster.”

  I peeked back. The forest shimmered in an insane dance of colors. Below, something wet was climbing my legs, but the colors around me, dazzling shades of pink, orange, and emerald, were too intense. I couldn’t stop looking at them. In hungry squelches, the wetness inched up my stomach. When it reached my shoulders, I could see it in my peripheral vision: a gelatinous black fungus. I went to wipe it away, but I couldn’t move my arms.

  “Join the cluster, Everson,” the voice whispered. “Become one.”

  The fungus squelched up my neck and spread over my jaw like a beard.

  In revulsion, I tore my gaze from the shimmering colors. “Mother!” I shouted.

  The word tapped into an undercurrent of power. Crackling energy broke from the sound, radiating out in all directions. The fungus blew from my body. The trees that held me parted.

  I stumbled backward and fell into a quiet clearing.

  “Everson,” someone said—but not the whispering voice this time.

  I turned and rose. At the center of the clearing stood my mother. A sob of relief hiccupped from my chest, and I ran toward her. Except for her lean stomach, she looked identical to the woman in the picture: half in shadow, hair brushed over one shoulder. But she wasn’t smiling in the same faint way. Not like in the framed photo. Not like in the other…

  Dreams, I thought suddenly. I’m inside a recurring dream.

  I peered around, expecting the dreamscape to dissolve away, but the clearing only became more vivid. A scattering of stately trees creaked and rustled in a light breeze. Birds chirped in their branches. I looked back at my mother, a sea of emotions roiling inside me. I’d never known her, and yet she’d become a powerful force in my imagination.

  By the time I arrived in front of her, I was a grown man—which had never happened before. No, the dream-child me would typically hug her leg and tell her I was lost. She would say that she’d found me, that she would always find me. She would then point the way from the forest, but tell me I had to make the journey on my own. She always said this with a smile.

  Now, concern lines creased her young face. Before I could ask what was wrong, she embraced me firmly and stood back.

  “Everson, there isn’t much time. The Whisperer is coming through.”

  “The Whisperer,” I echoed, remembering what Chicory had told me. An ancient entity older than the First Saints and Demons, the Whisperer had corrupted the youngest of Saint Michael’s nine children. It had turned Lich against his siblings. In a one-man rebellion, Lich had nearly overthrown the Order. He was eventually defeated, the fissure to the Whisperer sealed. But centuries later, Marlow, a man the Order believed to be my father, discovered Lich’s book. He replicated the spells, reopening the fissure to the ancient being.

  “How do we stop it?” I asked.

  My mother’s eyes hardened as she looked past me. “Run,” she said, but not in answer to my question.

  I turned and realized we were no longer in a clearing, but a large stone room, the trees becoming pillars. Familiar-looking figures in black robes strode toward us, all chanting a single word.

  “Traitor … traitor … traitor.”

  Backing in front of my mother, I groped for my cane, my amulet, my revolver, but I wasn’t carrying any of them. I had witnessed this scene before, in Lady Bastet’s scrying globe: the scene of my mother’s execution.

  “Leave her alone!” I shouted.

  My mother spoke near my ear. “Don’t let him know about you.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Did you really think you could keep up this shameful duplicity without me finding out?” A tall figure emerged through the others, the face beneath his hood an ornate gold mask. The mouth frowned in judgment while the dark, vacant eyeholes seemed to stare through me.

  Marlow.

  “I did nothing,” my mother told him.
r />   Marlow stopped in front of us. “Nothing? You joined the Front as a sworn rebel against tyranny. You pledged your allegiance, your life. Only for us to learn that you’re a plant for the Order.”

  “That’s a lie,” she said.

  The mage drew a wand that smelled of elderwood. “Then you shouldn’t have a problem submitting to a mind flaying.”

  “I will submit to nothing,” my mother said.

  I lunged for Marlow’s wand, but my hands passed through it. He seemed not to notice me.

  “Then you are admitting guilt,” he said.

  “If that’s what you want to believe,” she replied.

  “Vigore!” I shouted, thrusting my palms toward him. The energy of the force blast rippled through the dreamscape. When it subsided, everything wavered still again, and Marlow remained in front of us.

  “It’s the truth, traitor,” he said, raising his wand. “And you know the penalty.”

  “Do your worst.”

  “No!” I shouted.

  The force from the mage’s wand threw my mother against a stone pillar. She grunted in pain. Marlow spoke another Word, and vines writhed up through cracks in the floor, binding my mother to the pillar. An especially thick tendril wrapped her throat, making her gag.

  “It didn’t have to end this way, Eve,” he said before turning to the others. “Behold the penalty for treachery. Death by fire.”

  Yes, I had witnessed this scene before, from inside my mother’s memory. I had felt her fear, her pain. I raced back to her, intent on pulling the vines away. But when I reached for the thick tendril encircling her throat, my hands passed through it, as they’d done with the wand. Sadness filled my mother’s eyes as they met mine.

  “What can I do?” I pled. “How can I help you?”

  A whisper strained from her lips.

  “What?” I asked, leaning closer.

  I love you, Everson, she mouthed.

  “Fuoco!” Marlow shouted behind me.

  Flames exploded from the floor, engulfing my mother and throwing me backward. I pulled off my shirt and ran at the fire to beat it out. But the fire became a reflection in a gold mask, and I was standing in front of Marlow, staring up at him, and he was suddenly huge.

  Run, my mother had said. Don’t let him know about you.

  The rest of the room darkened as the mage’s face canted down. Beyond the eyeholes, a pair of lights burned in recognition. His hand shot out and seized my wrist. A cold, aching power emanated from his grip. I strained against him, but I was a small child again.

  “You’ve come to join us,” he whispered.

  I shook my head, unable to make a sound.

  “To join the cluster.” He lifted me from my feet.

  When our faces were even, Marlow reached for his mask, which continued to glisten with the fire that consumed my mother. Terror paralyzed me as he began to pull the mask away. I didn’t want to see his face … but a part of me had to, had to know if this person was my father.

  “To become one,” he whispered.

  Metal separated from skin in a wet squelching.

  “Everson … verson … son.”

  2

  A pair of ochre-green eyes stared at me through the dark. I snort-gasped and tried to flail back. Tendrils were wrapping my arms, my torso. I heaved with my legs. The top of my head hit something solid.

  A snort sounded. “Nice to see you, too.”

  “Tabitha?” I shook my arms from the sheets and slid a hand between the headboard and my aching crown. I fought to get my bearings. I’d been in a dream, Marlow about to remove his gold mask. My cat calling my name must have awakened me. I looked around. Except for a crescent moon high in the window, the room was dark. “What time is it?”

  Her eyes blinked slowly. “Apparently, time for you to moan in your sleep again.”

  I set my legs over the side of the bed and sat up, the horror of the dream still prickling through me. “Sorry about that.”

  “I told you to lay off the magic before bed.”

  “Oh, should I have eaten my weight in rib eye instead?”

  Tabitha narrowed her eyes at me, then thudded down from the end table and sauntered back to her ottoman beneath the window. It wasn’t as comfortable as her divan at home—a fact she reminded me of daily—but we weren’t at home. The week before, Chicory had loaded us into his Volkswagen Rabbit and driven us to a safe house in New Jersey, an unassuming blue affair across the Hudson River. “To train you for your mission,” he’d explained. Though all he’d done so far was fussed inside his lab, shooing me away anytime I asked what he was up to. Even now, I could hear his muttering voice down the hallway.

  “I’m not the one having nightmares,” Tabitha said as she arranged herself into a large mound. “The fifth in five nights?”

  “Yeah … except this one was different.” I coughed to clear my sleep-clogged throat. “I was lost in a forest again, calling for my mother. She found me, but this time she didn’t have any answers. Couldn’t tell me how to get out. She just told me to run and hide.”

  “Run from what?” Tabitha asked.

  “From whom,” I said, remembering the way the flames had danced in the gold mask. “The Death Mage.”

  “He is all you’ve been talking about for the last week. No wonder you’re having nightmares.” She yawned and smacked her lips. “Waking everyone up,” she added in a mutter, eyelids sliding closed.

  “Everyone meaning you?” I asked testily. “Look, I don’t know if it’s occurred to you, but I’m shipping out soon, and there’s a chance—hell, maybe a good chance—I won’t be coming back.”

  The thought lanced through me. As punishment for willingly giving my blood to Lady Bastet, which was then stolen by Marlow, the Order was mandating that I infiltrate Marlow’s hideout and destroy Lich’s book. It was a daunting mission. Magic-users more powerful than me had tried and failed, my mother among them. Hence Marlow’s title as Death Mage.

  “I will miss you darling,” Tabitha said sleepily.

  “Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  “But you’ll come back.”

  I looked at my cat, her words catching me by surprised. As a succubus, Tabitha had no divine powers, but hope flickered inside me anyway. “Oh yeah?” I asked cautiously.

  “You always do.”

  She had a point. Whether it was facing demon lords or ancient vampires, I had a knack for pulling something out of my hat at the last moment. Part of that went with being a magic-user. We carried a “luck quotient,” as Chicory called it. More accurately, we lived in a symbiotic relationship with magic, a force keen on being moved and manipulated. That relationship often led to sudden insights and synchronicities, especially in times of acute stress.

  But this challenge felt different—probably because I would be going up against another wizard, one much more powerful than I was. Not only would his luck quotient cancel mine, it would likely exceed it.

  “We’ll see,” I said.

  Instead of answering, Tabitha began to snore. Shaking my head, I stood and paced the crowded guest bedroom. While Chicory had spent the last week shut up in his lab, I’d been devoting my time to reading from a selection of books he’d picked out as well as performing exercises to enable me to channel more energy. I did feel stronger, more focused, but would it be enough?

  I stopped at the window and released a shaky breath. The dream, my mother’s warning to run…

  The Order wouldn’t be sending you if they thought you would fail, I reminded myself. Granted, they were a mysterious, often confounding, organization whose directives didn’t make a ton of sense sometimes—all right, most times—and yet they had been around for several millennia, suggesting they possessed more than an inkling of what they were doing.

  You’re going to have to trust their judgment.

  I looked toward the door as a burst of expletives sounded from down the hallway.

  I would also have to trust that Chicory knew what the he
ll he was doing.

  I emerged from my room the next morning and shouted in alarm. Across the dining room table, my cane was in a state of complete disassembly. I ran up to examine the carnage. The blade was without a hilt. The white opal stone, usually embedded in the staff, sat on the table’s very edge. And a set of copper metal bands I hadn’t even known belonged to the cane were scattered everywhere.

  “My sword and staff!”

  “Crotchety old thing,” Chicory said, as though in agreement. My round little mentor appeared from the kitchen, blowing the steam from the mouth of a coffee mug. His mop of gray hair looked messier than usual, telling me he probably hadn’t slept. Is this what he’d been doing all night?

  “It—it’s in pieces,” I said, still not believing what I was seeing. Thin wood shavings covered the round table in what appeared to have been a failed attempt to inscribe runes into the staff. The result was chicken scratch.

  Chicory took a loud slurp of coffee as he arrived beside me. “I’ve been trying to give her a needed upgrade, but she’s not having it. Had to get a little rough with her, I’m afraid.”

  “You’re going to put it back together, right?”

  “Eventually,” he replied, scratching his stubbly chin. “I’ll let her sit like this for another day, see if that doesn’t temper her spirits. Rest assured, once I complete the upgrade, she’ll be better than new. And you’ll be better prepared. I never intentionally send a wizard to his death. Well, unless so ordered.”

  “I appreciate that,” I muttered, my gaze drifting over the scattered parts again. After ten years, the sword and staff had become extensions of me. I couldn’t imagine life without them.

  “There’s extra coffee, if you’d like some,” my mentor said.

  Dragging a hand through my bed head, I gave a begrudging nod and shuffled into the kitchen. “Speaking of preparations,” I called as I poured myself a mug of the strong-smelling brew. “When are we going to get into serious training? I mean, I appreciate the exercises and extra reading, but it’s not the same as having spells slung at you. Blood spells, in particular.”

  The coffee shook slightly in the mug as I lifted it to my lips. The blood Marlow had stolen could be used to cast any number of spells, including a death spell. Though such spells did take time to prepare, that time was getting shorter.